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Some very simple things could be done to make the world feel more alive. Feasts are mentioned frequently, and while it's easy to dismiss such a thing as trivial, it gives the AI one other thing to do (other than making war) and that would be huge! Why not let noncombatant lords travel between fiefs with a small escort, instead of simply teleporting them everywhere?
More grandly: Claims could be explored as a gameplay mechanic. For example: if a fief was once held by a clan, they get a claim to it. They're more desiring to go to war with a faction that possess their claimed fiefs. They're more resentful of clans that possess their claimed fiefs.
The whole friends and enemies concept is virtually untapped potential because so much of the game revolves around the conditions of peace and war. If noble parties could attack each other, regardless of whether or not they were in a state of war, that opens the whole world up to interesting new possibilities. Enemies can pursue their vendettas, evil lords can commit acts of banditry, and all of their various actions together, could be factored into nations' war-or-peace decisions, rather than arbitrarily force the issue based on some wonky "we can't let the player get bored!" calculation. And once wars are declared: that's when armies start to form and cities begin to fall.
You may call it "incomplete" or "broken" or "they clearly didn't balance aspects of this game properly whatsoever" but I prefer to call it iMmErSiVe!
This is sarcasm
A major graphic overhaul and a bigger possible count of soldiers on the field.
The rest? Sidegrades and some powercreep.
The ai is still stupid af and the game in general lacks, like in every aspect, but i don't want to write a lenghty rant.
"Warband" is the better "game." That doesn't mean that it will appeal to everyone, but it's tighter, more rewarding, has better progression feedback and the player is the most important character in the game, even when they start off as a "nobody" with "nothing..."
It's gameplay "fits together" more betterer... It doesn't have a tacked-on feel and, even though some things are a bit simplistic, it "works better." It presents more "game" even though it doesn't actually have more content as "gameplay" elements. It's got a charming simple gameplay loop, kind of like having a tennis ball that can always present the gamer with something, some potential. Bannerlord is a gold-plated whiffle ball. Sure, it looks interesting and could be fun to play with for awhile, but it doesn't bring the bounce a good tennis ball does.
That doesn't mean Warband doesn't have its idiosyncrasies, but it's the better designed game regardless. It does the best with what it's got. Bannerlord has the potential to do a lot more, but it doesn't. On purpose. By design. It was just "too hard" to flesh out all the elements that would otherwise appear to demand it.
Bannerlord has potential. But, not as it is and not, IMO, the direction it'll be taken. It will be "finished" and then it will be maintained. And then, modders will have to rescue gameplay. Bannerlord will not escape from the enforced tedium and lackluster progression feedback and strangely shallow gameplay bits by itself.
If you go to a Lamborghini dealership, you'll see some awesome looking cars. They'll even crank up the engine for you. If you're really nice and your insurance is good, as well as your banker's signature on your line of credit declaration, you may get to drive it around the parking lot. You won't be going out on the scenic highway and cranking up them RPMs with glee, though. That's Bannerlord.
I think TW did a good job with making it a modern recap of Warband, but then they decided to "add things" and that's where they failed. Everything new, every new idea, all the advances they put into the IP with this updated vision of Mount&Blade gameplay... are borked. Somewhere in them, they've got issues. Some are like a toddler with a dirty diaper - Everyone can smell it, but ain't nobody volunteering to change it. It's like they just dumped it into EA and then didn't care whether or not some new idea was worthy of being in the game nor did they apparently care (as in "care to change them") if anyone liked those things in the game or how they were presented.
So, enjoy rummaging around in warehouse of Blacksmithing parts. Must be umpty-thousand of them with seventy-eleventy different combos to try, with a length slider... so I'm sure you'll find some meaningless bauble that "looks cool" after spending hours in your favorite town's Rent-A-Smithy while the world crumbles around you and much more interesting things are happening than watching wood burn click-after-click. That's some prime "game" development going on there, I tell ya... That's hard-coded fun for the masses! Are you not entertained?
Can't wait to see what the Kingdom Policy is going to be this week? Neither can anyone else in the game... No problem - Roll dice. It's no different.
Factions have sophisticated AI designed for the player to hate being in them so that they will be forced to form their own Kingdom. Good luck with that - The Mega-Magna-Carta was signed yesterday and being a "King" means you get to wear a paper hat and sit at the head of the table on your birthday.
Wanna spouse? Do you know how to use The Dialogue Choices? It's how all the cool kids are getting married these days, just like on Tinder! (Has nobody at TW ever done it the old-fashioned way?) Anyway, it's really easy, kinda like my ex-wife... You don't even have to put any effort into it! Again, just like my ex-wife... Grats, now you're married. Wasn't that a cool awesome roleplaying experiunce? JEENEEUS! The depth, the emotion, the romance, the herculean effort and all the drama! It's priceless! Which means they didn't spend any effort developing the most important event in the character's life... just like my ex-wife.
Hey, look, tournaments! Just like in Warband! YAY! Oh, wait, they're just kinda tacked-on just to be in the game. So, like... the game has Tournaments. 'Cause... reasons, like... something. Isn't that cool, though? Did that Tier 2 Archer just pwn you with a two-hander? Quality!
How 'bout that RPG-necessary stats stuff, huh guys? RPG Genre gotta RPG! There's like fifty-eleventy of them bound up in all those "Perks!" Woohoo, Perks! There are more of them than there were in Warband, so that means they're better, right? Oh, wait - There are so many that they all kind of reduce each one's significance, right? Never fear, you can just put all your effort into raising Blacksmithing so you can watch wood burn in your sixty-dollar wood-burning game.
Ah, Companions. So personable, so endearing, so very unique. It's remarkable, you know, how many have had the same experiences, done the same things, run into the same tragedies, have come from the same region... It's like being in Los Angeles at a tradeshow for billiard-ball manufacturers. No, I've never been to one of those, but I imagine there's like three guys there and one generic manufacturer they all buy from... kinda like RNG Companions. But, the player has to put in some effort playing the game, right? So, it's up to you to give them depth and meaning and you ain't getting that without putting in your own hard work. Real-life lessons, folks, right here.
But, guess what? The combat is good.
Yup, I like it, even though it's got its janky bits and the Commander A.I. is more A than I. Animations are good, what scenes there are can be decent, even if more should be done there. Units are good, visuals are good, it's all pretty decent. I don't think it's "relatively" better than Warband's, given the release dates, but it's good. After all, the Mount&Blade franchise is the only IP in town that does what it does in terms of mass combat. You can not find it like this in any other game. You can't. So, it's good... 'cause I don't know what a bad version of it would look like, i guess.
The Early to Mid Gameplay is good. It feels good, aside from some RNG issues that will certainly force a different opinion on players, playthrough to playthrough. Its lack of consistent presentation and experience is its failing point. But, progression in the Early to Mid game is solid when everything is working well. There are meaningful goals to reach, things to do, empire-building to start, and the player is sufficiently rewarded for their efforts, there.
After that though, nobody over at TW playtested mid-gameplay onward... That's all I can think of that would yield the result we ended up with. Nobody decided to try to discover what the player would experience deeper into the game. After all, it takes a lot of hours to get there and there was probably so much coding and bug-squashing work to do that it was just too difficult and time-consuming to try to figure out whether or not its worth doing.
I think it's a good experience for gamers who have not been exposed to the Mount&Blade series. They will enjoy the combat and the Early to Mid gameplay, then stop playing after awhile and go play something else... It's what gamers do. They'll have a good opinion of it and think the gameplay they remember looked great and the battles were fun. Honestly, nearly all of them are going to like it and say that when asked. It will be deserved, too, since they didn't go through to the end-game. Games to play an' all that...
Returning players will enjoy having a modern version of Warband combat and this game's Early-to-Mid gameplay. And... largely, that's it. They'll like it up until they see the looming spectre of the end-game. Most players never finished Warband, either. Then, like true Butterlords, they will wait for the mods... The Mods Will Fix All.
Overall, though? As someone who likes TW and saw a ton of potential in Bannerlord EA? I'm disappointed that a lot of effort went into squashing bugs and polishing unworthy gameplay content and very little effort went into adding depth and polish to the holistic gameplay experience. It's like it was designed by committee, with everyone saying their own priority was the most worthy, but nobody ever tried to fit them all together. Hey, I like brussel spouts, but I'm not going to put them in Jell-O... It'd clash with my mustard&milk shake.
As I stated long ago, it's born fruit - The gameplay elements we had on Day 1 was all that we were going to get on release. And, here we are. There hasn't been any significant changes to the gameplay loop and no depth worth mentioning added to any other element since EA opened. (A few things did get added, but they're not central to the player's experience. Some are terrible and some need polishing, too. I can't think of anything "good," content-worthy, that was added.)
Enjoy it.
Honestly.
I won't give it a failing recommend for new players and I know Warband fans have already bought it. /shrug But, it's not a quality product and not a well-designed "game." That's just the truth. The truth sometimes hurts, but that doesn't make it untrue.
If you like the gameplay in its entirety or can endure to enjoy, somehow, the end-game, that's fine! I am very happy for you if that's the case. Truly. I can enjoy some moments of play, too. But, what I see and what you, the reader sees, are probably very different things.
it offers exactly what warband was offering. a huge moddable plattform for people to enjoy mount and blade (riding a horse swinging a stick).
and yes warband was great because of passionate modmakers that made all those amazing mods for it, the basegame was fun but compared to the features the mods brought us...
and without the basegame which those modmakers could have never done on their own all those mods could have not been possible. the horse and weaponswinging animations alone are a workload that a simple modmaker would have to dedicate loads of time to do, the engine itself I am not even talking about.
i havent even tried any mods from the workshops or nexusmods, but i seen some very promising stuff there. the bannerlord online thingy is already a feature on its own and no feasts in warband can beat that. i have 800 hours in the vanilla bannerlord game, and yes it sucks that traits have no impact, but there are in the game, and those values can be accessed, so anyone with codereading comprehension can use those values and create new behaviors from those.
it kinda sucks that TW leaves all this work for unpaid modmakers, but at the same time all of them get a chance to make their own game idea a reality in bannerlord, and that is something not many game studios allow.
For me, Bannerlord is enjoyable for its battles only and for the different world but the immersion I get from warband simply makes warband much more enjoyable for me.
I feel like Bannerlord is a better single-player game compared to warband and the sieges are much better.
The individual ai seems worse, in that when an ai has somewhere to be, they just seem to walk into a wall of enemy blades, and sometimes not even fight.
I also dislike being part of a large battle with an ai commander. Initially they seem to use formations and move the army together but afterwards it just seems like theyre on "charge all" and sometimes it's a really silly move.
The downsides are not enough for me to rate it lower than Warband though.
As I said, the only thing I miss from Warband are some of the mods, but I can say the same about the original M&B too.
The CK spam selling that game on this forum and the spam from the makers of that game on this forum saying they wanted a M&B CK edition instead of M&B 2 which customers wanted and were sold is the obvious problem.
But its more than that, at every instance the game is done badly.
The crafting is very likely the worste crafting ever put into any video game ever. Then the changes to formations taking choice out of the players hands. Lack of thrones rooms, messenger birds and much more. Having to get rid of valued allies to use as mayors in lifeless trash cities and more.
The original fiction has suffered badly as well.
That it went 1.0 like this demanding so many online updates is also complete trash.
Mods may save it, really, but the updates will drag on betraying those highly valued customers and allies to the very title itself.
Its clear every excuse was used to completely ruin the game in the extreme. Unspeakable poison have been spammed on this forum for years in that regard.
M&B 2, Cyberpunk 2077, The Last of Us 2, the list is long of games betraying their creators, workers, and customers often showing outright sadism while doing it.
This is nothing new though and all the oldest trash selling is at work and ruining competition and ruining anything good where ever possible, and telling lies where ever possible. Not drama just the way it is as clear as day.
Very interesting how it works out.
Then you could make that argument
But today Bannerlord is better in every aspect and modding will get better over time
And miss all the fun with the false advertising and everything thats going to go on? The details of the ruining of an entire industry but in the computer age in the highest detail is something thats for sure.
I hope some forum dumb ass like me isnt the first place your hearing about that. :)
Trillions of dollars went into tech. The very smartest and best people anywhere on Earth are on it. Thousands of years of civilisation are on it. Think about that. :) Thats the real score. in video games and alot of things. :)
Mind blown or what. lol
Its dramatic but take a moment to actually think of the kind of people that are the very best Earth has to offer after thousands of years of civilisation, on whats going on.
Like my previous reply, interesting how it works out.
Oh and dont say no one said anything. :) (got a good laugh out of that